


i sat with my anger long enough (until she told me her real name was grief)

by Isolatedwriting



Category: The Last of Us (Video Games)
Genre: F/F, because we all need more yara, can be read as pregay or not, ellie and abby fight the rat king together au but then it keeps going, its a last of us story so obvious warnings apply, just women having a hard time with their feelings, lev is sweet, yara is there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-10
Updated: 2020-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:34:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27993096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isolatedwriting/pseuds/Isolatedwriting
Summary: “You…” She can't remember her name. She had seen it on files, that day all those years ago, but it was locked away with the rest of the inconsequential details of the day. She supposes it doesn’t matter.What was she doing here? And had she just saved her life?Or:Ellie runs into Abby in the hospital, and it sets something else in motion
Relationships: Abby & Ellie (The Last of Us), Abby/Ellie (The Last of Us)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 118





	i sat with my anger long enough (until she told me her real name was grief)

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah idk what this is i just wanted a fic with these two that also features the rat king and has some Yara so here we are.
> 
> Ive so many ideas for these two please help

  
Blood is rushing. It is so loud in Ellie’s ears. She can barely hear Nora’s coughing, or even any of the words she tries to choke out. The spores have more than infiltrated her system, and even without Ellie’s presence, she won’t last much longer. But she doesn’t really care anymore.

Her hand is raised, pipe in hand and ready to strike, and Ellie cannot hear anything but the blood in her ears when the explosion comes. It shakes the room, almost taking Ellie off her balance with the shock of it; shocking her back to reality like a blow to the head. She whips around, dropping her weapon and going for her revolver instead.

The room is red, hazy with fungus, and Ellie struggles to see through it for a moment, before the bricks come tumbling down, like something mighty had crashed into it. Her arm quivers, but as Ellie begins to advance, she finds she doesn’t really want too. She wants to go back to the theatre. She keeps going anyway. 

The wall does not crumble completely, but enough of a hole is formed that even Ellie can no longer ignore the commotion from inside. The gunfire and the yelling. Its dark in there. 

Nora either can’t move anymore, or does not have the will to, so Ellie leaves her there. She isn’t talking; besides one key fact she let slip. Fucking _Fireflies_. It doesn’t matter now, because Ellie isn’t going to hang around here and wait for whatever is out there to arrive.

As she rounds that corner, and all the sounds in the world come back to her - Nora's groans, the flare hiss - for a moment, all she sees is darkness. 

its like that for a long moment, the stillness so long and still that she begins to think she imagined the whole thing, and is almost about to turn back to Nora, to finish the job and get ready to face the reason she came here, when there is the unmistakeable rivet of reflecting liquid, and a long lick of fire appears, lighting the scene for just a moment. 

Ellie’s eye is automatically drawn to something grotesque. Its crying out like a wounded animal, but its pain means nothing to her. It charges its attacker, and Ellie watches it go, watches the fire disappear as the figure does, and she’s so shocked that she thinks of staying where she is, but then the body struggles back into sight through a crack in the wall, and Ellie spots a long, blonde braid, and its like she sees red, even more than before. 

Before she can say anything, or even move, the giant bloater (because that’s the only way she can comprehend it) smashes through the same wall, screaming and twisting its mass of limbs until one of its hands swings lucky, and grabs the figure Ellie can only see as Abby now around the waist, and lifts them high.

There’s the glint of a weapon meeting overgrown flesh, and Ellie's gun is out and pointed before she even wills it so. 

"Hey asshole!" She doesn’t know who she’s yelling at, but her shotgun is loaded and set on the swirling mass of mutated flesh, and she pulls the trigger. The buckshot pings off the creature, leaking what is like blood but not quite, but it has so little effect, it sends chills down her legs, so that she is cemented to look at it. Abby is yelling, twisting out of its many grips, shooting wildly into it until she’s fallen to the floor, and vanishes back into the dark.

Ellie's feet are lead, dragging forwards by what feels like more than her own free will, and she’s already run out of shells. Its a horrifying few seconds, before Abby's flashlight flickers, and Ellie's hands are already working, reloading without light because if her body knows anything, its working under pressure. 

The creature roars, and Ellie looks up just in time to see a wall crumbling. Abby has disappeared back into the mess, maybe unaware still of Ellie's presence there at all, just like the bloody mass of flesh chasing after her into darkness seemed unaffected by her attack. Ellie’s flashlight comes to life as she dips into water, almost knee deep, as if she needed anything else to make the descent near impossible. 

She can hear the screams, the gunfire, and it wakes her from her daze. The infected mass swirls into range, and she opens fire. She can practically feel the shots land, and she finds herself trapped with the two of them, ducking around each, in a weird kind of dance among the debris.

She tosses a molotov, just as Abby’s gun releases a burst of bullets from across the room, and the body between them begins to splinter, to crack apart, and its visceral and _bloody_ , a part of itself ripping away like it has tasted freedom for the first time in decades and hungers for nothing more. 

It comes for her like it knows she has seen it, and Ellie has a clean shot, so she takes it. 

Unluckily, its taken a moment too late, and the stalker collides hard into her body, still twitching. Ellie’s head hits the ground, and she’s out like a match in the wind. 

*

Its like the world is ending. Abby’s ears are ringing, and she’s not even sure if she’s got bullets left to shoot. Her mask is gory and unhelpful, but she can still see _it_ becoming slower each horrible second, and keeps moving. 

Somehow, it feels like she’s in the middle of a battlefield. Like there is a million shots ringing out from all directions, danger from everywhere, but she knows it must be her own shots ricocheting off the old piping and pinging back down. Abby isn’t going to die down here. 

Her flamethrower is out, she has no more shells, and she’s tossed her last pipe bomb, but even still, like magic, fire erupts and the creature screams like its in agony. She can see now why Lev called them demons, because there’s not really another word she can think of to describe this... thing. 

The fire across its body burns out slowly. Abby aims as strategically as she can with the last of her bullets. She’s beginning to panic, as blood covers what little sight her mask gave her, when she spots an old shotgun sitting on top of a hospital bed. Its like a mirage, but she runs towards it anyway, a little hope still surviving despite it all. She needs to get back to Yara. 

  
  
By the time the creature falls, Abby's chest feels ready to cave in from the relief alone. Her resources have dwindled, and if she’s been counting correctly, she only has four bullets left for her pistol. But the monster has fallen, and even though she doesn’t feel safe yet (and probably won't for a long time), she uses the moment to take stock.

While at some point a splinter had broken off, she finds it downed and unresponsive as she moves towards the light she hopes is an exit. She barely takes stock of it, other than noticing its remains and the weight it lifts from her shoulders. That’s why it comes as such a shock to find a second body curled up and slowly drowning in the shallows beside it, and an even greater one when she stops beside it. Abby can see the bubbles raising to the surface, the lack of a WLF patch, and almost leaves it there. 

But the figure is clearly still alive, chest rising and falling steadily once Abby pulls her to the edge of the water, and she would have left her there, but she recognises her, even in the dark. 

“You…” She can't remember her name. She had seen it on files, that day all those years ago, but it was locked away with the rest of the inconsequential details of the day. She supposes it doesn’t matter. 

What was _she_ doing here? And had she just saved her life? 

She needs to leave, to get back to Lev and get the supplies to Mel. She needs to get there fast and this isn’t going to be quick. But she doesn’t have it left in her to leave her down here, and she’s still a little delirious from the fight, so she bends down, slowly, because she is still jittery and weak in the knees, to pick her up. 

The girl is immune, but its still frightening to pull her up to her chest, leaving her neck open and exposed to those spore soaked teeth, because it would be just Abby's luck for that immunity to fail now. She feels light, almost without weight, but Abby figures its the adrenaline, and that any second her muscles might fail her and send them both crashing down to the floor. 

So she walks on, refusing to look down as she goes. Why is she here? _She_ shouldn’t be here, and it sends chills up her spine to think of why she might be. But the fallen stalker told its own story, and Abby can’t leave her there to die. She’ll dump her at some safe distance, safe in a bush or in the back of a car so she doesn’t have to consider this. 

There’s the most realistic answer; that Joel’s charge is here to kill her. It makes sense, in its own way, but Abby does not look a gift horse in the mouth. She heard those other gunshots ring out, and isn’t sure if she could have taken down that mammoth by herself. She doesn’t want to think about it. 

Getting out is harder than expected, with the rapidly growing dead weight hanging on, but they make it, and Abby sighs in relief when the rain begins to hit down on her skin. She didn’t think she would ever feel it again.

Lev finds her, saves her from the guards looking for all of them, and when his eyes land on the body in her arms, Abby can register the confusion there. She hasn’t told him much about her past, about what she had done to try and stop the nightmares, but he’s a perceptive kid, and knows something is up straight away. 

"Who is that?" He asks, once they have made it far enough away from the hospital to speak freely. Abby’s arms are aching, and she takes the opportunity to dump the girl’s body down on an overgrown log. She groans as she lands, and Abby is restless with the sound of it. She wants to be gone by the time those eyes open again. Lev seems to have other plans. 

"Abby, who is she?"

"No one important."

"Then why-"

Abby blows out a steam of hot air. "I got the supplies we need, we need to go."

"Abby..."

"She helped me out in there... I don’t know why." She’s already made it clear that she will never cross that sky bridge again, and even Lev can see that its not worth it. The journey is going to be long and they will need to move fast. Dead weight is dead weight, no matter if that weight may have saved her ass. 

She’s turning away, the action already fuzzy in her memory and feeling kind of bizarre for even doing it at all, when Lev’s hand on her arm stops her. He’s looking at this girl ( _Joel’s daughter_ , she thinks with a start) like he can see there is history between them, and he is terrified and confused and eager to move. His eyes direct hers to a boat, and the decision is no longer Abby’s to make. 

The journey is long and awkward, and Lev tries to ask so many different questions. The girl, wrists bound, doesn’t actually wake up, and Abby doesn’t really want to look at her. She strains ahead instead, searching for signs of life - of an ambush - and tries to keep her mind quiet. They could deal with it at the aquarium. Owen would do it for her, if she asked. 

Lev figures that she isn’t going to answer, so he reaches inside their captive's bag to root around. Abby's eyes dart down to him, and then to the girl (her name is close to breaking though, but every time she gets close to it, Abby hits a wall, painted with a firefly logo), just to make sure she isn’t awake. That she isn’t about to lunge towards Lev. Abby’s chest feels tight, and she almost thinks of tossing her overboard and forgetting all about her, but then she remembers the man. The man that they had also left alive. 

She shoves the thoughts away as the aquarium comes into view, and all focus goes to Yara. They took longer than she wanted, too long, and by the time they reach land, she’s darting out of the boat like there is a horde on her tail. 

Lev has his nose stuck in a book, but he shoulders the spare bag as Abby pulls the girl up. She’s starting to stir, and Abby thinks she'll probably be back in fighting shape quicker than they can get inside, so she bangs roughly on the door, and waits for Owen. 

Her shouting rouses something from the girl in her arms, and she drops her on the steps in a moment of fearful jumpiness, leaping back as soon as she doss, like she had just disturbed a grease fire. "Lev, stay back!” She's already drawing a weapon, but it seems the fall did the job by itself, and the girl stays down. 

Lev meets Abby's eyes for a second, where they both freeze up a little in what could have been an embarrassing display, if anyone else had been around to see it. When it passes, Lev smiles at her, a kind of wry expression that makes her feel like they have just gotten away with something, and he’s holding that book in his hands and she’s about to ask about it, when the door bangs open. 

"Abby." Its Owen, and he's not actually looking at her, but at the ground. "What-" 

"Later." There’s an urgency in her voice, and he knows her well enough to accept it. He bends to pull the prone woman's body up, and urges them inside with a flick of his head. 

"Mel's got everything ready for you."

"How is Yara?" Lev sounds shaky, and Abby finds herself reaching out, taking the bag from his shoulders and hoisting it onto her own. 

"She's strong." Owen seems strained, and his gait is faster than normal, but his voice is even. Abby doesn’t want to out his lie to the kid, so she keeps the unsettled notion to herself. She feels feverish with it, even as they come to a stop outside of what Abby can only assume is the mock surgical suite. The door is open, and through it she can see Mel preparing, and Yara unmoving on the chopping block. 

Lev immediately moves forward, and her hand lands heavily on his shoulder to stop him. "Ask Mel before you get too close okay?" He nods, and darts out from under her like a fox. She watches him go for a moment, watches Mel frown but allow him to approach, and watches him begin to pray. 

Scars have their own stance they take during prayer, something unique to them, and she finds herself studying it in passing, before everything comes rushing back to the surface, and she follows the path Owen took, up towards the shark exhibit. She knows exactly what he’s thinking, because she’s known him long enough and spoken so many hypotheticals that she _knows_ what he would do with a prisoner within these walls. 

He has already dumped her in the cage by the time she reaches it. Pausing for a moment, she considers the people from the 'before time', and how bored they must have been to willingly surround themselves in sharks, but its useful now, and that’s all that matters. 

"What's her name?"

He jumps at the sound, but then he smiles, shakes his head. "You're getting into new habits today." He says, and slide the lock shut. He’s handcuffed her for good measure, to one of the long bars, so she can stay laying down, and its more mercy than she imagined from him. When she doesn’t give him anything, he continues. "Ellie." Owen's voice is wistful, and Abby feels mad for having forgotten it. "She was a kid last time I saw her."

"We were kids." Abby chides. "And you never got close enough to her.” 

He looks like he wants to fight with her, but doesn’t, because her hackles are clearly up, and she hasn’t looked away from Ellie, even as they were speaking. He goes for the safer route instead. "Where did you find her?"

Abby doesn’t answer for a second, and he reaches out to touch her, to prompt her, but she shakes him off before he gets close. "That’s the thing, I think she might have saved my ass back there."

"That doesn’t sound right."

It really doesn’t, but that’s why they're here. So she tells him; about the hospital, the ambulance, about that _thing_ , and at a certain point she can tell he doesn’t really believe her, but keeps going anyway. 

“Y’know what I think?”

“What?” She’s snapping now, tired, and she knows she needs to get back to Lev (he’s all alone right now), so she’s restless but she’s taking it out on Owen. He doesn’t react to it.

“I think you’re going through some kind of phase. Three strays in one day? That’s gotta be something pathologic.” 

Abby shakes her head, but she’s grateful for the attempt. “I need to check on Lev.”

“Then I’ll watch her.”

“Thanks, Owen.” She means it, so much, but as soon as she’s out of that room and can close all that off, that’s exactly what she does. Lev is sitting alone, on a set of chairs by the door. Mel has closed it, and Abby has half a mind to go in and make sure she’s okay by herself, but knows better than to do it. Mel was probably pissed off enough without her showing her face, and she would yell if she needed them. 

So she sits beside the kid, and even though she has no idea what to say – what could possibly comfort him – she rests a hand on his shoulder for a bit, and gives it a shake to remind him that he is alive. That Yara is alive and that Mel can do anything if the wind blows in her favour. But she doesn’t know how to say that in a way that would matter, so she says nothing. 

*

Ellie wakes up before the surgery is done. 

Abby is not surprised. Owen comes down to let her know, once he is sure Ellie isn’t going anywhere, in a sombre moment in the middle of a longer sombre day, and Abby suddenly doesn’t know what to do with herself. Not that she had before. She had been teaching Lev some card games (or trying too, they were still mastering the deck) at a whisper, like if she spoke too loud the air would crack and splinter around them. Owen does it for her. 

Lev meets her eyes and its like he sees right through her. Its an uncomfortable moment, their conversations from the hotel ringing harshly behind her eyes, before she stands, almost knocking over her chair with the suddenness of it all. 

“I’ll be right back.” She says, directed towards Lev but not to his face, before she’s walking, fast and loose and she can hear Owen’s boots behind her. She doesn’t know what she’s doing or what she’s about to do but her skin is crawling, and Lev calls her name. 

“Abby!” Its so loud – as if anything could be as loud as that _sawing_ – it stops her in her tracks. Owen’s frowning, clearly urging her on, but she just can’t. Lev looks so small, waiting for his sister and completely alone. So she’s helpless to deny him when he asks to come too. Its actually a relief, and Abby finds her steps feel lighter with Lev following along. 

Maybe it’s the implication in Owen’s face, but Abby feels no obligation to it anyway, and she’s grateful for Lev’s presence by her side. She missed him down in the hospital depths; as much as she hates to admit that a Scar could be valuable asset, he’s talented with a bow and more quick witted than most of the people she ran with, and now that they’re back at the aquarium, she kind of misses the easy comradery that comes with fighting for your life. Now he’s reserved, stressed, and she can’t come to his rescue so easily. 

Ellie is standing by the time they arrive, proving Abby right. She recovers herself quick. 

Abby tries not to freeze up too much, but the absolute fury in those eyes almost does it. Ellie looks feral, and strains against her binds as soon as she spots them. Abby feels Lev take a step back, and reaches out behind her to steady him. 

“What are you doing here?” 

The words come out before Abby thinks them through, but they’re honest. Ellie sneers. “What do you think?” 

Abby knows what she thinks. There’s a ball of panic in her gut for everyone else. She hasn’t seen most of the old crew in days, and if Ellie was in the hospital… 

“I know why you killed Joel.” Ellie’s voice sounds so different from that day at the lodge. Abby supposes that makes sense. “You’re Fireflies, right?”

“Ex-Fireflies.” Owen takes it upon himself to clarify. “How many of you are here?”

Ellie doesn’t answer that one so freely. Abby stands against the wall, keeping her distance and letting Owen take the lead here. Lev speaks up beside her. “There’s at least three of them.” 

Its like the air turns to ice.

Abby opens her mouth to speak, to ask how he could possibly know that, but he shuts her down with a look, silent agreement that he would explain later, all while Ellie seethes in her cage. 

“Three isn’t many.” Owen thinks out loud, and Abby just nods. Ellie is staring at her like she’s a unicorn or something, and its making her uncomfortable. She’s tired, in need of a long sleep and a wash, but she needs to be here. 

“We didn’t go after him because we’re fucking Fireflies.” She mutters, loud enough that she hopes Ellie can here it.

They get nothing more out of her, and eventually, Abby retreats. There’s only so much sustained eye contact she can keep, even when its pleasant, and Ellie’s gaze is anything but pleasant. She doesn’t say anything, she just gets up and leaves, Lev on her heels. 

Owen doesn’t follow.

*

_“You’re a piece of shit!”_

Mel’s words ring in her ears, but Abby doesn’t have the will to dwell on them. Her leg bounces restlessly, and Ellie rolls her eyes. 

“Can I get, like a book or something? A fish book or whatever.” 

“You couldn’t even read it.” 

Ellie jingles her cuffs. “Touché.” 

Its been almost a whole day, and no one has come after Ellie. Abby doesn’t know if she’s relieved or more stressed out than ever. Lev is beside her, sketching away in an old journal she had found for him in the gift shop, and either doesn’t care to hear them, or is choosing to stay out of it.

Abby is vaguely aware of where he has picked up this habit, and she doesn’t like it. 

Yara is sleeping. She was up and walking hours after surgery, and it took a lot of convincing to get her to rest, but she’s holding strong, and even though Abby’s whole body still hurts, she doesn’t care, because the lines of stress on Lev’s face have smoothened a little. Yara is strong, and for now, things are quiet. 

Ellie has simmered down a little too. The first few hours were awkward and stressful, and you could almost hear the gears in her head turning, looking for an escape, before she realised there wasn’t one and decided to bide her time. She hasn’t offered much up, besides rage, and Abby is already regretting bringing her back here and not blowing her brains out in the guts of that hospital. No one would ever even know. 

But she couldn’t do that. She’ll still haunted by her dreams, and doesn’t want another to add to it. 

Lev finished up his drawing (it’s a shark, based on the one painted across the walls beside them, and its not bad), and puts the diary aside, to do something that Abby can only hope is well calculated. He reaches towards Ellie’s things, minus the weapons, and begins rummaging through her pack. 

That wakes her up. “Hey, what the fuck?”

Lev freezes, like a mouse being circled by a predator, but there is a cheeky air to him that is more intriguing than what’s going on in her own head, so Abby doesn’t stop him. Ellie tears at her wrists, trying to get closer to the boy, but it’s hopeless. “Don’t touch my shit!”

Abby scoffs, but nods to Lev when he looks at her for back up. He is a brave kid, a free thinker, but he is only thirteen, and there is something about the way Ellie glowers that would make even the most self assured person feel a little nervous. He digs out her journal, places it on the floor without opening it, and Abby sees what he’s doing. It’s a power play. 

Owen is down with Mel, talking her down from wherever she is, and Abby’s glad not to be around them. She’s feeling guilty enough already, and every time Mel so much as looks at her she wants to dive out the window and into the angry sea. Owen’s puppy dog eyes aren’t much better. 

So she finds herself in the best possibly situation. Sitting in a room with the boy she was meant to kill and the woman trying to kill her. 

Lev takes out a few other pieces: some kind of playing cards, a map, old pills and letters. Ellie seems like a hoarder type from what Abby can see, but she understands the instinct. She goes for the map, because that’s the one she noted Ellie reacting too. 

“We didn’t know this was your hide out.” Ellie says, and Abby can tell it’s a distraction more than anything, but she allows it. 

“But you’ve been around.” She tries to sound bored instead of breathless, and Ellie shrugs. Her jacket is rumpled and still looks wet; she must be cold. 

“You started this.”

“Joel started this.”

Ellie heaves a breath, furious, and for a moment Abby can see the girl who made it halfway across the country, only to sign up for death. There’s something lost in her, and its frightening, in its own way. It makes her want to send Lev away, lest he be infected by it. 

For a moment, she betrays herself, in a weak moment of unquenchable sadness. “Did he ever regret it?”

For a moment, Ellie seems hesitant to answer. She doesn’t seem chatty on a good day and in good company, but this question seems to have struck a nerve. 

“No.”

It comes out choked, pained, and Abby can’t bring herself to look anywhere but at Ellie’s bag, resting against Lev’s legs. 

Ellie is still talking, stumbling over words about how much she didn’t want what Joel did, but Abby doesn’t care. Ellie never even saw the inside of those walls, never looked her dad in the eye and took the life from his eyes, and none of that mattered. She’s got her answer. Still, there is a certain level of rage that cannot be controlled, and she points it down. 

“You weren’t even awake!” Abby spits. “You didn’t even see him.”

The air is thick, stagnant, and eventually, Abby can’t take it anymore, so she tells Lev she’s going to get Owen, and to wait there until he arrives. Ellie just watches her go. 

“What happened between you two?” Lev asks, later. He sounds strained, and Abby doesn’t want to answer him. She feels the horrible shadow of shame creep heavily across her chest, “Whose Joel?”

“Joel killed my dad.” She whispers, but it doesn’t hurt the way it usually does. She finds that pain in his eyes instead. 

*

Ellie is hurting. 

Her wrists are raw and bloody, but at least she can sit and stand, stretch her legs. Its more than she expected, and certainly more than she would afford them if the situations were reversed. 

She’s worried about Dina, how sick she had been the last time she had seen her, the conversations they hadn’t had and might never have. It consumed her when the others thought she was asleep, and thoughts she could no longer distract herself away with stabbing runners or fleeing militias. The militia is already here. 

Lev comes to speak with her often. She cannot fathom where he and his sister come into this story, how someone like _Abby_ and her crew could have ended up in the company of scars. That isn’t even touching on the way that they interacted with each other. Ellie, while never a master of human interaction, has had more experience than most in calculating the whims of others. She knows genuine fear when she sees it. 

The kid isn’t scared of her, but Abby is. She’s terrified in a way Ellie herself is familiar with, so she doesn’t like to look at it. Lev though, he’s different. His sister too, even if she has little time for Ellie, recovering from the removal of her arm. Yara regards her with caution. Lev is nothing but curious. 

“Your girlfriend is pregnant?” He asks once. She knows by now that he is reading her journal, and it makes her stomach squirm with anxiety, because she doesn’t even know what’s in there, how much she has revealed. She regrets that brainless writing now. She just nods a little. 

“Maybe a month or two along.” 

Lev hums a little. He’s sketching in that little notebook again, and she wonders if he is drawing her the way she may have drawn him in another life. “I never knew anyone interested in their same sex.” He says, quietly, not looking at her, and she scoffs. 

“You should get out more.” 

He doesn’t answer her for a while, and she rolls her eyes. “How did you end up here? I thought Scars and Wolves hated each other.”

“Seraphites.” He says. 

“What?”

“Not Scars, we’re called Seraphites.” He’s looking at her with hard eyes. Well, as hard as a young teens eyes can be. Its familiar. She concedes. 

“Fine. But that doesn’t answer my question.”

Lev closes his book, looking a million miles away but calm. Ellie wishes she had that kind of stillness to her, but her bones quiver constantly. Lev sighs. 

“We just ran into each other.”

“And she didn’t kill you?”

Lev’s jaw is set, a clear response to Ellie pushing as many buttons as she can while she can. He shakes his head. 

“No, she saved us. Well, we saved her.” It only raises ore questions, but Ellie stores the information away quickly. “You saved her too.” That stops her in her tracks. 

Ellie shakes her head, because that doesn’t sound right, even if it does ring true. “Whatever you say, kiddo.”

Lev scoffs, and he sounds so much like Abby its almost unnerving. Ellie’s eyes land on her own bag across the room, and she tries again. “You read my journal, didn’t you?” He shrugs. “I think you owe me something in return.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works.” He says, but after a beat, continues. “I broke the law. They broke Yara’s arm.” He’s distressed, and Ellie feels a sudden urge to stop him, like guilt but not quite. 

“You guys are on the run.” It’s a statement, because she gets it. 

He just nods, and goes back to his little journal, his hand grazing slowly across the paper. The scraping of the pencil was oddly comforting, little strokes of sound like plucked strings. Ellie tries to relax the way her gut tenses. 

“What are you drawing?”

“Abby told me there was a demon in the hospital, different than the others.” He shows her is sketch, and Ellie’s eyes widen, because there it is. He’s quite talented. “What do you think?”

“Yeah… looks good.”

*

Yara is there when Abby wakes up. 

It’s a rough awakening, and Yara jumps when Abby’s eyes burst open and she flies up like one possessed. “You have bad dreams.” She says, and it is not a question. Abby shakes it off. 

Yara smiles. She has such an air about her, like someone who has seen and understood more than anyone Abby has known, but she’s just a girl. Younger than the youngest soldiers in Abby’s unit and (if Lev has given her any indication), just as powerful an opponent. Honestly, she’s just glad she’s never met either of them across a battlefield, and she can push her nightmare aside for her. 

“How’s your arm?”

“Better than this morning. Better than yesterday.” Mel has explained to her how best to keep it clean, but it seems that Yara didn’t need it. Abby’s never seen someone heal like this; like its powered by something other than the replication of cells. Yara doesn’t pray much anymore, less than Lev does anyway, but its oddly powerful to watch. Even Ellie seemed landed by her. 

_Ellie_. Ugh, Abby is so tired. 

Owen had pulled her aside the night before, demanding to know what her plan was when she had nothing to give to him. 

He tried to kiss her. She had dodged him. 

She grimaces at the memory, and Yara sits on the edge of the couch she was calling a bed, looking down with concern. “I’m worried for Lev.”

“Why?” Abby knows why. She’s brought them into as much danger as they were in before, waiting for a different enemy to show up at their doors. “Besides the obvious.” 

“He won’t leave Seattle, but he’s in danger here.” She seems older than her years, leaning back with a sigh. “Your friend told us about Santa Barbara.”

A surge of panic comes rearing its head in Abby’s chest. Owen’s Firefly quest had been on their horizon for a long time, but she doesn’t know how to handle it coming back up. She doesn’t know what she wants to do. 

That’s not true. Part of her wants to go back to the base, get a hot meal and a hotter shower, surrounded by her _things_ and her friends. A bigger part of her is aware that those friends are gone. Ellie’s silent awareness of their names told them that much. She had gotten sick all night after she realised it. The largest voice in her head knows that running back to Isaac isn’t going to happen, and part of that is because of these kids. These kids she saved and who saved her and who she can’t just abandon for what she knows isn’t working anymore. 

That doesn’t make Owen’s fantasy seem any more feasible. He wants to bring Ellie to them. As of it would even matter now. 

She pushes all that aside for the more pressing question. “Why doesn’t he want to leave Seattle?” 

“Our mom.” 

Abby can understand that. They set off to try and find something to cheer him up.

*

“Did you… do you know what happened to Marlene?” 

Abby freezes, a figure flashing to mind that she hasn’t thought of in a while. Marlene, Queen Firefly herself; a broken body in a pool of blood, with a face caved in with bullet shard. She’s surprised Ellie doesn’t know, and it inverts that sickness in her stomach a little. Maybe it’s a good feeling, but Abby can’t tell. 

“I saw her.” She says. “In a pile of bodies. Before they burned them.”

“Oh.” 

Silence stretches, Ellie fidgeting in her cage and Abby in her chair. Abby hadn’t ever had a relationship with Marlene outside of their Firefly dynamic (orders, guidance, gunfire), but she knew she went way back with Ellie. She had known her mom, loved her mom, and yet here they are. 

Abby hopes it hurts.

“Lev told me about your dad.” 

Usually, when he has one of these conversations he has with Ellie, Lev reports back. She’s not surprised that he didn’t mention that slip before. Its been two nights now, and the threat of Ellie’s group looms over them all, like a ticking bomb no one knows how to disarm. They need to make a decision, and _leave_. But its never that easy. 

“He shouldn’t have done that.”

“No…” Ellis’s shoes squeak against the linoleum. “But I didn’t know.”

Abby doesn’t care. _She doesn’t care_. 

“Well, you know now.” Her voice sounds strained, and Abby hates herself for it. Ellie looks so tired, the bruises on her face beginning to flower out as they heal. It ages her. 

“I’m sorry, for what Joel did… I never wanted that.” Ellie sounds sincere, but its too little too late. Abby hasn’t had a calm night of sleep since, with the woman in the cage getting a starring role in some. 

When she tries to respond, it doesn’t come, but the floodgates are opening. Ellie takes the reins. “I wanted to die.” She chokes on her attempts, and Abby just shakes her head. 

“Its done.” 

Ellie recovers, even scoffs a little. “So now that we’re friends… can you uncuff me?” 

Abby barks a laugh, sounding a little like she hadn’t laughed in weeks, and shakes her head. “You’re not charming enough for that trick to work.”

“Damn… I’ve been lied too.” 

*

That night, Abby falls asleep in her chair. Ellie doesn’t really know what to do about it. 

She looks smaller in her sleep, somehow, crumpled in on herself. Ellie isn’t a good sleeper herself; she talks and groans and kicks. But Abby is eerily still, and if Ellie didn’t know better she might have thought she was dead. 

Its hard now. Harder every hour. Because there’s a part of her that sees how this feels like destiny. 

Maybe she was meant to find her way back to the fireflies like this. It would be poetic, maybe she could even write a song about it before they cut into her brain. That’s what she wanted, wasn’t it?

The thought sets her heart in motion, and she thinks of Dina. Dina, who she had left in such a precarious position, alone and _sick_ , and how _stupid_ she feels for the choices that landed her here. 

She’s spiralling, and fast, but then Abby starts awake right before it begins to take her apart, and the two of them lock eyes. Abby is still shaking sleep from her, and Ellie sees the instant fear, the instinctual way she reaches for her hip, for a gun that isn’t there. Would she still shoot her? Would Ellie? 

Ellie doesn’t feel any kind of way about it, either way. 

“Was I asleep?” 

“Yeah.”

Abby jumps to her feet, visibly shaking off the encounter, but she’s sheepish. Ellie wonders at how easily she could have killed her, had she not attacked that demon, and just let the scene play out instead. 

Hell, maybe she would have. 

Instead, Abby yawns and stretches, settling back into the chair with a bit more determination colouring her. 

“Do you regret it?” Ellie has to ask. She has to know. Even if she dies tonight she needs to know. 

Abby doesn’t give her the satisfaction of words, closes her eyes instead of even looking at her, but gives the briefest little nod of her head, like she doesn’t even want to admit it to herself, never mind to Ellie. 

Its enough. 

*

Then comes a day when Ellie is first left alone. She doesn’t know what’s up, because she fell asleep with Abby watching her, but wakes up alone. And she stays that way for a while. 

Just when she’s starting to worry, in the weird way one in this situation can worry, she hears footsteps. Its Owen, the dog on his heels, and he isn’t looking great. 

“So, you ready to talk?”

“Honestly? No.” Ellie grins a little, because she knows this kinda dude. The guy who brings his dog into an interrogation because he knows he doesn’t have leverage. 

He shakes it off. “I still don’t believe you’re her.” It’s the same thing Nora had said, and for a moment she almost says as much, just to see what might happen. At this stage, her immediate fear of being tortured and murdered isn’t at the forefront anymore. 

“In the flesh.” 

Ellie can sense tension in this little group. Owen’s a Firefly still, more than Nora had been, or Abby appears. Its clear by the incompetence in his interrogation (the keys to her trap jingle useless and obviously at his hip), and his reaction to her itself. His girlfriend, Mel, has returned to their WLF base, to gather intel and supplies, but she doesn’t see the reaction of an almost father here. She sees a person who has laid eyes on their golden ticket.

It doesn’t feel good to recognise it. 

He rounds the cage, so that he’s almost out of her eye line, behind her, and Ellie’s skin prickles. “I’m fixing up a boat, we’ll hopefully be headed out in a few days.”

Ellie almost laughs. “The only person who could have made a vaccine is dead.” She said, a disembodied voice on a recorder echoing in her ear. “Why not just kill me?”

He shakes his head, like he knows more than she does, but she doesn’t believe in it. She’s given up on a vaccine, and she can’t believe that he hasn’t. 

“How do you think you’ll get me there?” Ellie counters. “Long trip like that, you’d slip up eventually.” The silent threat is clear, but it doesn’t bother Owen. 

“I don’t think you’d run.”

Her words to Abby ring uncomfortably in her head, and she wonders if she told him. It doesn’t exactly feel like a betrayal, but she doesn’t like it. 

“Lev’s gone.” 

Ellie twists and shifts in her bindings, trying to get a look at him, but its fruitless. She thinks of the boy she knows, the sweet boy even younger than she was when she killed her first man, and she thinks of haunting whistles and arrows embedding deep into flesh until it lodges itself there, never to be removed. “The others went after him, so its just you and me now. And Alice.”

Alice, for all her bark, wiggles a little at the sound of her name, even as her wet teeth snap loudly in Ellie’s direction. Lev told her once that she’s a sweet creatures, and to trust that meant a lot coming from him, and she leans on that now. 

“So what? Are you going to torture me?”

He shrugs, like it’s a game they’re playing as equals. Ellie grits her teeth. Because she knows that with those kids around she had leverage. With Abby around, she understood the power structure at play. If Abby didn’t kill her, no one would. With them gone, it’s a different game entirely. 

For a moment, Ellie wonders what his plan is. If he is just here to play, to battle with words for entertainment. Or if he might actually use the knife on his belt. She’s about to ask him as much, when there is a bang, like a falling tin, and they all freeze. 

In a burst of movement and chaos Ellie can barely keep up with, the door slams open. Alice whirls on the figure, Ellie’s eyes too slow to comprehend, teeth bared and fearsome, before a shot rings out, and everything returns to normal. 

“Alice!” Owen is running forward, pistol in hand and ready to fire, when the barrel of a rifle finds itself point blank in front of him, and he backs off. Ellie only then recognises the shaggy man in wet clothes, by the ponytail swinging behind him. 

“Back up against that cage boy, if you know what’s good for you.” That voice wakes her up, and Ellie strains wildly. Owen, to his credit, takes the order like a soldier, and backs up until he hits against the bars. Tommy nods his head once, twice, before the butt of the gun makes contact with Owen’s forehead, and he’s down. 

“Fuck, Tommy!” Ellie says, unbelieving gaze watching as Tommy quickly grabs the keys, moving to unlock Ellie’s wrists. Her arms ache as she lowers them correctly to her side, she rolls her shoulders to get the blood running again, and meets Tommy’s eye for a moment. He’s not smiling, or doing anything really. 

He doesn’t look like Tommy anymore. 

“They’re headed to that fucking island.” Ellie manages to get the words out, but he shakes his head. 

“Its done, Ellie.” His words sound so final, she doesn’t clarify that that wasn’t what she meant. 

But then Lev’s face flashes in her mind, as well as those who she had seen hanging lifelessly in trees and like fairy lights in the television studio, and she’s about to open her mouth and let it all spill out, to tell Tommy how confused and dazzled she is by all she has been through since she entered this cage. Was it only a few days? Had it only been a few days since she and Dina rode into Seattle? Tommy interrupts her before she can say anything.

“Jesse tracked me down, he’s back with Dina at the theatre.” It comes as a wave of relief, and Ellie could have crumbled with it. 

“The streets are empty, but we need to move.” He’s so resigned. “We’re leaving at sunrise.”

She just nods, while he is rounding his way back to her. Alice is still whimpering on the ground, bleeding out from her lower flank, distracting in her suffering, so that when Owen begins to move, begins to reach blindly for his gun, no one notices until he’s fired it. 

Two bullets burst through Tommy’s chest like screws in a faulty boiler, splattering blood across the room and Ellie, who is struck into movement straight away, grabbing for the weapon through the bars. Owen’s hands are tied behind him, and it’s a miracle on his behalf that he managed to line up a shot at all, but he is no match for Ellie, no match for her fingers scratching across his face, into his eyes, until he releases the gun, and takes a bullet to the head for his trouble. 

Ellie can’t breathe, can’t look at Tommy, so she searches for the keys instead. She spots them, just about a bodies length from her cage, and spends a considerable amount of time trying to urge her arms closer through the bars, but its just not working. 

Eventually, she stops trying. 

*

Somehow, she falls asleep, only waking up when she hears Abby calling out. 

They’re back. 

“Up here!” Ellie doesn’t know what draws the words from her, but she waits in awkward stillness, listening to boots slamming up towards her. She doesn’t look up when Abby bursts in, but she hears her; crying and wrenching and gasping, like Alice had while she bled out hours ago. 

By the time she does chance to look up, she notices Yara is gone and Lev is bloodied, and pulls it all together from there. 

She closes her eyes, ready for the killing blow to come down, but it never does. Lev is down beside Abby, and arm across her back and whispering words to her that Ellie cannot hear, until Abby’s eyes finally tear away from Owen’s destroyed face, and back to her. 

“What happened here?”

Ellie doesn’t know how to answer that. The truth is a no go, so she just shakes her head, baffled by the situation and by Abby shining eyes staring back at her. She looks tired, in a way that only comes with experience. Ellie feels the weight of it land squarely on her shoulders. Lev is just… _staring_ at Alice. 

Abby repeats her question, even going so far as to slam her fist against the bars separating them. Ellie is sure it hurts, that she might have actually shattered a few fingers but doesn’t feel it yet, and she stays quiet. “Abby…” Lev’s so quiet now, reserved in a way he wasn’t before. “We should go.”

Ellie watches her father’s killer stand, take in three deep breaths, and its as if the woman who had been sobbing on the floor only moments ago was just a trick of the eye. She looks dangerous again now, nodding to Lev. 

“Hey… wait.” Ellie says, her voice feeling rusty and weak, and Abby doesn’t look at her. She looks at the floor, and at the keys resting there, only to kick them towards Ellie. 

“Just go.” She murmurs, before continuing out the door, and down towards the exit. Ellie supposes she’s going to gather supplies, and wondered if she could still fix that sailboat; if without Owen she would even want too. Lev stays for a moment, fidgeting as she reaches out to grab the keys. 

As the door clicks open, she almost expects him to draw his bow on her. She might have done something similar, when she was about his age, but he doesn’t. He turns and follows after Abby, leaving Ellie to gather her things and ready herself. She shoulders her backpack, rolling her limbs and shaking off the last few days. 

Her guns aren’t here. She’s just beginning to mourn for the loss of them, how much she will struggle without weaponry even while Seattle remains quiet, before then there is the loud and unmistakable sound of a gunshot, echoing up to her and sending ice down her limbs. 

Suddenly she’s moving. Her converse are slipping, and she doesn’t know her way around, but she stumbles through the identical walls of empty tanks, until she turns a corner into a larger atrium. It reminds her of the museum Joel had once taken her too, but for fish. 

And nothing happening. They are both still there, still standing, and Ellie’s eyes flick between them for a moment, looking fr answers, until they land on the gun. Its between them on the floor, and its Joel’s. 

Lev has begun to move, edging slowly towards Abby like he was worried she was somehow shot. Shes holding herself high, jaw tight and eyes closed, but no one is hurt, and ellie doesn’t know what to do with herself now that she knows that. 

“I think I broke my fucking hand.” Abby says, suddenly, and Ellie _laughs_. She goddamn laughs, and it echoes around the huge space, up to the whale hanging above them and back down to collide with Abby and Lev. Both sets of eyes land on her, and there was that _fear_ again. 

Abby clears her throat. “Its yours anyway.” She mutters, and turns back to what would have once been a receptionist’s desk, gathering as much as she can into a new backpack she has sourced on her way there. Lev watches while Ellie creeps forward, picking the revolver from the floor and checking for ammo. There’s only two bullets left. She holsters it back at her hip. 

She doesn’t know what she’s doing, why she’s hovering instead of running for the door. The sunlight is beginning to stream in through the windows, and she needs to move fast if she is going to catch up. But she doesn’t, because she and Lev are looking at each other like they’re having a conversation, even though Ellie doesn’t know what’s being said. Abby, as before, stays out of it. 

Eventually, she has taken all that she can from the aquarium, and Abby brushes past, reaching out to gesture for Lev to follow. Ellie finds herself trailing behind. 

They follow along until Abby leads them into a larger, stadium style area, with the biggest and deepest pool Ellie has ever seen at the centre of it. Then she sees the boats. 

There are two present, a smaller one, and the sailboat she assumes is Owen’s. Was Owen’s. Abby hops up to board it easily. 

“Where are you going?”

Ellie asks this question with some level of anxiety, so much that her voice shakes and cuts out. 

“I’m going to fix it.” She says, and Ellie doesn’t know if Abby is particularly tech savvy, but Owen had made it sound like finishing was hours away. She climbs slowly up the side of the pool, carefully, like a moth circling the blue light of a bug zapper, but never getting close enough to feel the heat. “You can leave.”

Ellie doesn’t know what she wants. She wants to run back to Dina, to cower away from the world for a little bit, warm her body in front of Jackson’s roaring fires. But then she thinks of Joel, of what she took, what he took, and she doesn’t know anymore.

So she decides not to decide, and sits in wait instead on the edge of the pool, watching Abby disappear into the ship and down into open wiring and twisted gears. 

Lev takes a seat across from her, useless in his guardians endeavour and knowing it, on folded legs. As the moment stretches, Ellie realises that he is praying, and thinks again of Dina, how she had spoken of religion. 

She wants to know what he is praying for, but thinks better of interrupting, so she decides to go down another route. 

Ellie reaches into her bag for her journal and something to write with, her hands stiff and unused to a pen, and begins to write. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed!!! Please leave a comment because they help a lot if you did, or follow my tumblr (abbysratking) because its on brand
> 
> Anyway stay safe and well out there kiddos goodbye for now x


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